Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on July 20th, 2020

[Adrian Zenz]

In 2018 several important decisions were made and policies were established that influenced everything that happened since then. The first was forced labour. In 2018 we had a policy of shifting internment camp detainees into different placements of coerced labour. This policy was initiated in the first half of 2018. It was ramped up with the construction of a lot of “poverty alleviation workshops”, as they are called, in the second half of 2018. We have evidence that many detainees from the vocational internment camps, which is only one type of extra-legal re-education camp, were in 2019, and are, being shifted into forced labour placements. The other thing is that in 2019, in terms of birth control, we had a much more intrusive attempt to sterilize women in the countryside especially. We had a draconian ramping up of birth prevention, coercive labour and parent-child separation through also converting a lot of preschools into boarding schools.

Basically, from 2018 to 2019 we had a shift from the shorter-term and medium-term internment campaign to the long-term police state. The policing and the securitization of wider society and the crackdown on and atrocities in Uighur society in general gathered significant speed in 2019. It's a shift to the long-term strategy that we see. It comes along with apparent normalization with a reduction of the visible police presence and a reduction and closing down of some of the vocational internment camps, although that is also unclear. It is an apparent superficial normalization of Uighur life, whereas in reality the police state is fully extended and going into long-term mode.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you.

Would other witnesses like to comment on that?

Ms. Mahmut—

[Dr. Olsi Jazexhi]

Can I jump in?

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Certainly.

[Dr. Olsi Jazexhi]

I visited these concentration camps in Xinjiang in 2019. Perhaps I can add to what has been said.

The Chinese government has been so much worried about what we are saying in the west about the presence of these concentration camps. I was part of a group of journalists and diplomats that the Chinese government had invited throughout 2019 in order to sell a fake story to the outside world, in particular to the west. We found out during our visit in 2019 that the Chinese government was so much worried about what we were saying in the west that they were trying a way to deceive the world.

After coming out of Xinjiang, in September I went public, as soon as I returned to Europe, condemning and describing to the world what they were doing with these mass internment camps. I was attacked by the Global Times, which is one of the official newspapers of the Chinese government, whereby I was accused as a fake reporter, among others. The Chinese authorities said they had brought, before me, around 1,000 journalists and diplomats.

Now, a big question that we are faced with in the west is why, out of 1,000 journalists and diplomats, very few are giving testimonies. The reason is that the Chinese government is very careful in organizing guided tours for foreigners, even for the UN observers.

They do not allow foreigners to interview individuals in the streets. Moreover, even for us as journalists, when they send us to these vocational training centres, they do not want us to ask questions. They only prepare shows. They want us to feel, and to show to the outside world, that China is treating the Uighurs fine, that they're happy, they're sinifying themselves and they're abandoning their language and their religion out of their own free will.

If China gave full access to investigate and question people, then there would be a huge explosion. The problem with China is that they are so worried about this, and they are spending so much—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

[Dr. Olsi Jazexhi]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Now we are moving to our next member, Monsieur Brunelle-Duceppe, for seven minutes.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My sincere thanks to all the witnesses. We need them at this subcommittee. Their testimony has been quite exceptional and has touched us all.

I would also like to thank the employees of the House of Commons for helping us do this work today.

I want to thank all my hon. colleagues who decided to come together and do this work. We must now ensure that this subcommittee can make an impact, beyond mere earnest talk and fine words.

I was not here in 2018. I imagine that the situation has changed, but as parliamentarians, we have a duty to propose something tangible and to be able to call things as they are. I am very happy to be with you today, and I hope that we will all truly achieve this goal together.

First and foremost, Ms. Mahmut, I would like to ask you a question.

We are talking about impact, as I just mentioned. What response do you expect from the Canadian government, right away in the short term?

[Dr. Raziya Mahmut]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe.

In the short term, we want the government to impose an official sanction on the Chinese representatives, because I imagine they have a lot of assets here. I have heard that all the assets of the government officials are primarily in the United States followed by Canada.

Canada could first freeze all the assets of the Chinese officials and then sanction them directly. That would be very effective.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Yes, I think we are—

[Dr. Raziya Mahmut]

It could be done in the short term.

It is a very difficult situation for the government. You can also boycott Chinese products. Some of them come from our region, East Turkestan.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much, Ms. Mahmut.

My next question is for Mr. Zenz.

Mr. Zenz, I very much appreciated your testimony. Your comments are eye-opening. I hope that people will realize this fairly quickly.

Will this system get worse if nothing happens and nothing is done, Mr. Zenz? Is there any indication of that?

[Adrian Zenz]

The evidence that we're uncovering is certainly getting worse as we speak. I think there is significant concern as to the nature of the oppression and what it encompasses in terms of life. This is an unprecedented atrocity. It is designed to break the Uighurs. It is designed to break their souls, break their backs, put them into placements and hem them in from all sides. It's a perfect assimilation.

It's a bit like a Holocaust 2.0, if I may say so, but much more sophisticated. It flies below the radar of a lot of atrocity and classic genocide definitions, but it's all the more terrifying in the long term. This is a long-term plan. It is quite unprecedented.

If all these things continue to go on, the mental impacts and the physical impacts on the Uighurs are going to be unspeakable as year after year goes by. That's as much as I think we can say about this. This justifies an urgent response.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Chair, since I still have some time left, I will ask Mr. Jazexhi a question.

Mr. Jazexhi, you have been on the ground. We are told that women and men are in forced labour camps and that women are actually being chemically sterilized.

What is the situation with Uyghur children? Can you tell us about them, Mr. Jazexhi?

[Dr. Olsi Jazexhi]

On our visit, we were on a guided tour and we were not given much freedom to investigate and to understand what was going on. During our visit in major cities like Aksu and Kashgar, we tried to talk to the locals, but the Chinese Communist officials violently separated us from speaking to other people.

What we saw in these vocational training centres was that the Chinese authorities were taking adults and people from the streets. The ages of the people we saw were probably from 17 to 50. They were forcefully locking them up in these concentration camps, forcing them to eat pork—which is haram according to the Islamic religion—prohibiting them from practising their religion, their faith and their beliefs, stopping them from speaking Turkish and forcefully sinifying them.

The aim of the Communist Party officials of China for what they are doing in Xinjiang is to totally assimilate the Uighurs. Why? It's because Xinjiang sits on China's most important province for its imperialist project, the one belt one road initiative. The huge network of roads and highways that China is building, through which the Chinese government aims to colonize, economically, Asia and Africa, passes through Xinjiang. The native people of Xinjiang who are Turkic Muslims represent the major threat to China's 21st-century imperialist project, which is the economic colonization of Asia and Africa.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

How much time do I have left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

You have 30 seconds.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

I will pass. I will have other questions later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

Our last member for this round is Ms. McPherson, for seven minutes.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you all very much for being here and sharing your expertise with us. This is such an important topic and I'm so thankful to be able to have this experience.

Thank you to all of the members of the committee who have asked such great questions, many of which I had wanted to ask, so I was happy to hear that.

I'm a new parliamentarian and one of the things I'm a little disappointed to hear is—not disappointed but—the fact that we have done this research before, that we have looked at this issue and that there are those in the room who feel we have not done enough as the Canadian government to support the Uighur people in China.

The first question I want to ask is for Dr. Mahmut.

You spoke a little about what Canada has done in the past and your hopes for what we will do moving forward. I think you spoke about making sure that we had a very clear statement where we were naming what was happening and that we were looking at sanctions and asylum for Uighur individuals.

Could you talk a little more about what you would like to see Canada do and what we have done right? What are those things you think we have done right in terms of our response, and some of the things you've seen other countries around the world do that we could learn from or emulate?

[Dr. Raziya Mahmut]

Thank you. It's an excellent question.

Until now, Canada has done a lot of things, but it is mainly in the areas of our question on the UN and worldwide. However, it's mostly dialogue. We haven't really seen a significant action path until now.

Significant action could be.... For example, the U.S., based on the Magnitsky legislation, for Chinese officials, specifically officials working at East Turkestan and in Xinjiang, places sanctions on them. They freeze lots of companies that have provided the technology for the atrocities in East Turkestan. Lots of companies have sanctions on them. They have also identified lots of companies that are involved in making products with forced labour, this kind of thing.

The Canadian government can do the same thing.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Wonderful. Thank you.

I have one other thing, a quick follow-up on that.

In terms of our engagement at the multilateral level, do you feel that Canada has done enough, or would you like to see more action at that multilateral level?

[Dr. Raziya Mahmut]

I don't think Canada has done enough, because until now, the diplomacy between Canada and China has not been normal but Canada's response has been very mild. It should take a hard line in its response. We also request that the China-Canada relations committee meet as soon as possible and very often. We didn't hear anything and we didn't see anything about a Canada-China committee meeting or about their doing something. That should be an urgent next step.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I would put forward, that if any of the other witnesses who are joining us via video technology would like to add to that, that would be great.